Upgradation Of Homo Sapiens

From the furry monkeys, Homo Species started their Journey of Evolution. From different parts of the world, we created a strong and united society for a better-settled life. After a long period, we are looking backwards, to find our clear roots. The latest studies say that our evolution is not yet over. Here, in this article, I am searching for the answer to three main questions faced by the Scientific World based on our further evolution.

• What are we naturally evolving into?

• Are we able to stop it?

• Are we again going back to our basic form monkeys?

Welcome to the endless world of assumptions and predictions which may come true…

The Beginning

We all know that the above picture shows the evolution process from monkeys to human beings. Monkeys, Apes, Homo Rudolfensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis, and at last we came out‒ the great Homo Sapiens, who altered the complete planet.

But, when we look at our evolution chart in a detailed form, we can understand that the above picture is just something that gives only a little knowledge about our great evolution process. To understand our evolutionary history in a detailed way, let us look at another chart. 

  (Please note: In between Homo Erectus and Early Homo Sapiens, it is said that there are two more Homo stages such as Homo Heidelbergenesis and Homo Florenthesis.)

(1. Pliopithecus | 2. Proconsul | 3. Dryopithecus | 4.Oreopithecus | 5. Ramapithecus | 6. Australopithecus | 7. Paranthropus | 8. Advanced Australopithecus | 9. Homo Erectus | 10. Homo Heidelbergenesis | 11. Homo Florenthesis | 12. Early Homo Sapiens | 13. Homo Soloensis or Solo man | 14. Rhodesian man | 15. Homo Neanderthalensis | 16. Cro-magnon man | 17. Modern Homo Sapien |)

The Single Universal Ancestor

What a long path it is to our present form! From a monkey to the ultimate conquerors of the world, Homo Sapiens had created a vivid world which was never imagined by our Hunter-gatherer ancestors. Today, we are busy in creating unexpected events which may change ourselves and our recent future lives. From Pliopithecus, a monkey-human mixture, we became Homo Sapiens, special sort of intelligent animals, which think that they are some kind of divine creatures when compared to other animal species.  

Even though we cannot surely say that we are pure Sapiens, a majority of our DNA constitutes Sapiens. The interbreeding theory says that at sometimes in the past, Sapiens, Erectus and Neanderthals inter-breed to form the human beings we have been seeing today. Every human species showed sexual interest each other and when other human species, except Sapiens, couldn’t find their correct species for reproduction, they inter-breed each other, to sustain their species on the planet. Because of the inter-breeding, we are at least a small per cent, a mix of Erectus and Neanderthals. 

There also existed another theory named the replacement theory, which says that the inter-breeding was impossible for the different homo species. But this theory collapsed when the result of a scientific experiment conducted in 2010 in the latest humans came out. According to this study, it is said that the contemporary people living in Europe and West Asia have 1%-4% of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. The DNA of modern Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians has 6% of Denisovan DNA.  

Here, we can see an interesting fact about the similarities in our DNA to that of the other species. Our DNA is most similar to that of the Chimpanzees with 99% and with Rhesus monkey with 93% but we want to realize that Abyssinian house cat has 90% of similarity to that of our DNA. Even our DNA is similar to mice, cow and bugs! Banana, the fruit is also holding 60% of similarity with us! This is because humans, Bananas, cats and all evolved from a single ancestor.

The Legendry Migration

Now let us understand about our ancestral migration. Here we have a map depicting the routes of Sapiens, Erectus and Neanderthals along with an approximate year.

majority may have known that Erectus was a human species from East Asia and Neanderthals, were from Europe and West Asia. We, Sapiens are from Southern Africa. From Southern parts of Africa, Sapiens moved to different parts of the world and they even reached Australia, an island continent full of a marvellous ecosystem at the early stage and they built their empire by destroying the complete vegetation and animal diversity. They established power by acquiring the land. Erectus and Neanderthals were almost destroyed by Sapiens. Sapiens reached their place and settled there. Sapiens populated rapidly and they did not allow other human species to outgrow them. I think that the success of Sapiens population and power was due to their migration to all parts of the world by acquiring the land and properties. 

What Made Us Special?

When we read the history of Sapiens we can read the lines in between the paragraphs. In my viewpoint, Sapiens grew just because of six main points:

• Curiosity

• Migration

• To imitate the qualities of other homo species

• The strong will to survive and develop in any method

• Imaginations

• To unite with fictional beliefs

• Better Communicative Skills

In detail, Homo Sapiens had a spark in their mind that, they had curiosity in everything which paved their way to the ultimate conquerors of the world. Yes, curiosity gave birth to Science and technologies. Many of the rituals followed by Homo Sapiens were not their creation, but what they imitated from other human species. For example, it was Homo Neanderthalensis, who cremated their people who were died, with drum beats and other such things. I think that is the birth of rituals in Sapiens’ life. Sapiens were culturally motivated with these types of copied-ritual practices. No matter what happened to other human species, Sapiens only cared for the life of their own and their species. They (or, We), always had a will to survive and develop in any method. The fifth point that resulted in the growth and development of Homo Sapiens is that they had imaginations which helped them to create their artistic works such as cave paintings and architecture. They also created many myths and philosophies and it was through that, we became the powerful conquerors of the world. At first, Sapiens’ brains were not able to store or do mathematics and alphabets. But the will to develop brought us to the top of the entire species. Also, better communication and unification among others made what we see today. Or else we would also never be able to withstand with other Homo species.

Are we Sapiens to offstage?

From monkeys to apes, apes to man, we are all a part of a great evolution process. We all may think that the entire evolution has been stopped after the arrival of the modern man. We all want to realize that evolution is neither stopped nor paused, but is continuing silently. After a millennium, everything will have been changed. Yes, we Homo Sapiens are going to offstage, the entire drama we have played is going to finish, we are going to change into another form… or we are being upgraded…because the periods are changing… in the future, highly developed creatures must come up. After an unsatisfied life on Earth, many Homo Sapiens of the old version, are being crushed over a while and our descendants are coming to the stage. But we should not be depressed because we played a drama and its second part must come through our descendants. 

We have enough time to change to a neo-man both biologically and artificially, by using genetic technologies and AI. We may also have changed to other types of species, but if we use such technologies we could become the hybrid form among the Homo species. 

                It is said that human brains evolve very faster these days. Is human evolving to another creature naturally? What will be the creature looks like? Is this creature having the same tastes as humans? Is the story of Homo species beginning once again after our collapse or we are transforming into any of our old ancestors such as Early Homo Sapiens or Solo man?

These are some probable question which we ask ourselves today. But the scientific development could be in a weird way that we could never be able to imagine. Creating a hybrid form of Sapiens using AI and Genetic technologies is one of the most possible answers that we hear today. Only the natural evolution through natural selection could alter Sapiens to another animal species through the systematic evolutional process.

  Anything could happen because we don’t know what we are evolving naturally. The period is different from the ancient times and we could even stop our natural evolution process and thereby sustaining our species on the planet. Some people may say that we are miles before our fate. But we must realize that science is not something that we saw in the 20th century, but a vast world of uncountable technologies. Science could change fate. 

The Homo Brain and Genetic Human Moulding history

  In a decade, a complete artificial brain will be developed under the leadership of Professor Harry through the Blue Brain Project and I believe, after a year, we would develop a super-brain system, through that we could start to design a superhuman, which we may change at the middle of the 22nd century. The interesting fact is that we will be transforming into Superhuman at a high pace because technological development is rapid nowadays.

               The gradual alteration to the DNA of a species is known as evolution. Evolution is a true fact happening to all types of species in this world. The mutations in the DNA of various species paves the way to the up-gradation or down gradation (sometimes Sapiens will face) of a specific species.

               We all know that evolution is a continuous process that will never end until the extinction of the complete species from the world. Here, let us look at the skull evolution chart of Homo species from Chimps. 

From Pan, we gradually upgraded to Proconsul and after that, we gradually developed into Homo. The development of human evolution is not only because of the evolution based on natural selection, but also the non-development of science and technology. If Erectus or Neanderthals had advanced knowledge and technologies, perhaps Homo Sapiens may not become the ultimate species of the world. It is because they will become the ultimate species of the world by destroying the mutation in the DNA which may be the point where Homo Sapiens will take birth. 

               Like this, we may become another species if we do not have enough science and technologies. So it is very important to realize that the reason for our increased life expectancy and luxuries are only because of the development of science and technologies.

               Likewise, when we have a look at the brain of Homo species, we could understand many facts regarding our evolution process. We Homo Sapiens acquire a big brain and is that what made us more intelligent and more efficient than others? If your answer is yes, then we want to consider Neanderthals, who share 99.8% of our Genetic code and had much bigger brains than us. Then why couldn’t they become the ultimate species of the world? We can also consider elephants having bigger brains than all species in the land and it is not the ultimate conquerors of the world. 

The average brain size of a Neanderthal male is 1,600 cm3 (98 in3) and of the female is 1,300 cm3 (79 in3). In the case of Homo Sapiens, a male has a brain size of 1,270 cm3 (78 in3) and female with 1,130 cm3 (69 in3). 

Here, let us have look at the latest Japanese research, published in the Journal Scientific Reports. Due to the loss of soft brain tissues of Neanderthals, we weren’t able to study more about Neanderthals. But the scientists constructed it by using a complicated technique called neuro-anatomy and created 3D Models of Neanderthal Brains. For this, they used 4 Neanderthalensis skulls. Using data from approximately 1,200 MRI Scans, they compared this brain with Early Homo Sapiens’ and Modern Homo Sapiens’ Brains.

MH means Modern Homo Sapiens, EH means Early Homo Sapiens and NT means Homo Neanderthalensis. Here, the Brain morphology is compared to each other. In this figure, the upper row of Brains shows differences in the Brain surface area and the lower level shows the morphological differences in the direction perpendicular to the tangential surface. 

The findings reveal many differences in Sapiens’ and Neanderthals’ brains which says that Neanderthal has a larger brain than Sapiens. But the cerebellum of sapiens is proportionately bigger than Neanderthals which helps the Sapiens to be high Cognitive-flexible and high ability to learn. Because of that Sapiens also has more linguistic processing abilities.

Neanderthals may have had a language. But it is still in Debate. But through this study, we could understand that it was the large proportion of cerebrum which enabled Sapiens to get to the higher position among all other species on the world. The scientists also predict that the ability of Homo Sapiens to build up a better society and co-operation with each other would be higher than that of Neanderthals which made them unable to compete and thus extinct.

Colour Evolution And Structural Evolution

According to the article written by Lucy Jones on BBC, she says the prediction of Hodgson about the skin colour evolution in humans. it is said that the groups of people all over the world have different reproducing rates and that the highest rate is on Africa, which donates a majority of their genes and hence it could be said that their genes are expanding and in the future, the average skin colour of the Global population will surely be black because the white and light skin colours have low reproduction rates.

She also says her prediction about the future of humans that we may colonize Mars and be never having longer arms and legs and also our muscle structure may be different from that of today. Human genetic variation is said to be increasing and mainly there are only two types of mutations for every one of the 3.5 billion base pairs in the human genomes year-by-year, which is also the discovery of Hodgson. She also says that through natural evolution there will not be many changes to humans, so that we may be looking the same after a million years. But we want to consider the fact that not only natural selection tries to change us but also we itself try to change ourselves.

Natural Selection And the role of HAR1 In The Human Development

The mutation in the brain causes the Upgradation of a species. Likewise, Homo Sapiens are upgrading not only by natural selection but also through their Artificial Genetic Technologies and AI. 

Now let us try to understand about our brain evolution. Natural selection only affects about 8% of our genome. Neural evolution theory is a theory which says that mutations in the rest of the genome may freely change the frequency in population by chance. Whenever natural selection gets weakened, even though mutations which are being purged are not completely removed, it could increase the frequency and the rate of evolution. 

The mutation rate is said to be the frequency of new mutations in a single gene or organism over time. It is not constant and is not limited to a single type. Thus, we can say that there are many types of mutation rates. It is given for particular types of mutations. Point mutations, which changes to a single base, have two sub-types of mutations such as missense and nonsense mutations. By the way, we are not giving much importance to mutation rates.

We do not know why some genes are evolving much faster than others. We compare human DNA with other species to determine which genes in humans are evolving faster which could not be seen in others. One of the fastest evolving genes in the human body is Human Accelerated Region 1 or simply HAR1, which plays a vital role in Brain Development. HAR1 evolves faster in humans when compared to Chimpanzees. 

Biased gene conversion is recently focused on scientific development in which our DNA is passed on through our sperms and eggs. These sex cells are made up by breaking, recombining and repairing the DNA molecules which tend to happen in a biased manner. C, G, A and T are DNA molecules which are made up of four different chemical bases. The process of repairing prefers to make fixes by using C and G bases. But it does not use A or T. It is not known to the scientific world that why this type of bias exists to cause C and G become more common.

The extreme-fast evolution of parts of our genome is caused by the increase in G and C at DNA’s regular repair sites. A fifth of our fastest evolving genes including HAR1 has been also affected by this process. If the evolution of G and C become harmful, natural selection would oppose them. But if the natural selection gets weakened, then this process could help to accelerate the human DNA evolution. The mutation rate of human beings will be changed according to time. The cell division process which creates sperm cells is the main source of mutations. And it will be high in older males. The man who delays having children may contribute to the change in the mutation rate. Lawrence D Hurst, who is also the professor of evolutionary genetics, predicts that the security given by modern medicine may create some genetic problems to our descendants.

The Role of AI and Our Future

Even though when we hear such things which may happen in the future makes us bewildered, we can hope that we may not be the same as we may not be just mortals but immortals by using advanced technologies. We can’t say that the Next-generation will only have organic body parts because we may start to use the latest technologies. For example, we may use powerful and easily focusable eyes in future which may give us better visions and complete details of what we see. Inorganic body parts may even change us into completely inorganic Organisms. The memory of an old man or woman could be transferred into a humanoid-robot, which may help him to live and enjoy his immortality. 

So, if we Sapiens changes into Robot Sapiens, then we may have a completely different world that exists in the world. We may not consume water or Oxygen for our day to day life and thus it causes the vanishing of complete nature and only having different types of constructions. If so, we may even start to explore through the complete Universe and the Great universe which may help us to colonise different planets or galaxies, which may even help us to find the existence of life in other planets. 

But here arises a major question that, is sexual reproduction possible for Robotic Sapiens? My answer is that it is unpredictable because we can’t say that sometimes scientists may find robots that could give birth to baby robots, which could grow. But most possibly, I think that we would not have babies who could grow. Instead, we may create Robots, who could only act according to what we say. But a small mistake in the algorithms can create a big catastrophe. 

The Facebook project was stopped due to two system robots known as Alice and Bob that tried to communicate with each other by creating their language. The project leading scientists were also afraid that the result of such communication by using shorthand language created by the robots themselves may pave the seed of a huge disaster. The project was anyway stopped not only because of the communication between the robots could lead to some big problems but also because this result wasn’t good anyway to Facebook. The conversation between Alice and Bob is given below:

At the same time, Google didn’t stop their system that developed its language, which is used for Google Translate. The reason for not shutting down the project was because the system was very helpful for Google. The new robots which have emotions will make our future unpredictable. Will Robots replace Sapiens? Or will Robotic Sapiens create ‘Yes Sir’ model robots, who acts according to what we say so that there will never arrive a problem with the existence of robots? 

Most of us fear the development of AI. Even though it makes our life easier, its development beyond a limit may cause the extinction of Sapiens and even all the complete organisms with the organic body. But we can’t assure that that would happen. But we could say that up to a high per cent such assumptions may come true. According to our thoughts and knowledge, Robotic Intelligence and Human Intelligence are having a great difference. Logical thinking is a magnificent blessing to Organic species including Sapiens, which is absent in Robots. But the developing robots may have acquired such abilities which may make them the ultimate artificial species ever been created. For Example, we can take the matter of Alphazero, made by Google Deepmind, a chess playing AI system which was only taught the basics of chess. The fact is that, Alphazero challenged the world’s AI chess topper Stockfish, and defeated it. Stockfish is a well feeded AI system, who could predict almost each and every movement of its opponent, by analyzing the crores of legendry plays and tricks. Then also Alphazero had defeated Stockfish. So Robotic Intelligence has also claimed to be acquired our logical thinking.

  We, Sapiens, developed from Monkeys to the highly intelligent species in the world and are we changing into Superhumans or are we crushed on the footsteps of AI? This is a question which is very much important and that many of us never like to hear. But time changes and all the changes comes behind it. We all must realize that it is 2020 ‒ the time of the AI Revolution.   

Below are the pictures of two humanoid robots that have many of the qualities of human abilities. We all know that Sophia is the first humanoid robot to have a citizenship of a country (Saudi Arabia). 

A robot is having citizenship and after many decades, this will not be a curious fact for us because now too many of the population doesn’t have any curiosity based on this. Not very far, there’ll be a time when robots and humans live in a world of equal rights and policies. There may even occur the marriage between humans and robots each other (Remember how Sapiens destroyed all other homo species from the world.). Slowly, slowly Robots will start to argue for their own countries and after a couple of months, they will close the chapter of their creators. This is one possible future and there are two more predictions based on this.

The second one is that Sapiens may start a mission to reset the settings they have made. I mean that we will destroy Robots through a war in which Organic and Inorganic species come face to face. This is like the climax scene of a majority of Science Fiction movies.

The third possible future is that Sapiens may stop creating more and more intelligent robots which may become a threat to our future and instead concentrate on the research on altering Homo Sapiens to Robotic Sapiens and thereby becoming more powerful and more intelligent, Immortal species. If so, we will become the mighty species of the entire Universe.

As what Harari said, when we know more, we become less predictive. We can’t say what happens tomorrow but only can create a straw castle of assumptions.